Demographic trap

However, in subsequent decades most of those countries were unable to keep improving economic development to match their population's growth, by filling the education needs for more school age children, creating more jobs for the expanding workforce, and providing basic infrastructure and services, such as sewage, roads, bridges, water supplies, electricity, and stable food supplies.

[2] A possible result of a country remaining trapped in stage 2 is its government may reach a state of "demographic fatigue," writes Donald Kaufman.

In this condition, the government will lack financial resources to stabilize its population's growth and becomes unable to deal effectively with threats from natural disasters, such as hurricanes, floods, landslides, drought, and disease.

[2] Environmentalist Lester Brown notes that 16 of the 20 countries designated as "failed states" in 2010 were caught in this demographic trap, and would most likely be unable to break out of it on their own.

[3] Others argue that, while the combination of increasing fertility and decreasing mortality is a very real phenomenon, there is no reason to assume that this is harmful to developing countries.